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Sindarin is one of the constructed languages devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for use in his fantasy stories set in Arda, primarily in Middle-earth. Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the Elves.
The word Sindarin is Quenya for Grey-elven, since it was the language of the Grey Elves of Beleriand. These were Elves of the Third Clan who remained behind in Beleriand after the Great Journey. Their language became estranged from that of their kin who sailed over sea. Sindarin derives from an earlier language called Common Telerin, which evolved from Common Eldarin, the tongue of the Eldar before their divisions, e.g., those Elves who decided to follow the Vala Oromë and undertook the Great March to Valinor. Even before that the Eldar Elves spoke the original speech of all Elves, or Primitive Quendian.
In the Third Age (the setting of The Lord of the Rings), Sindarin was the language most commonly spoken by most Elves in the Western part of Middle-earth. Sindarin is the language usually referred to as the Elf-Tongue or Elven-Tongue in The Lord of the Rings. When the Quenya-speaking Noldor returned to Middle-earth, they adopted the Sindarin language. Quenya and Sindarin were related, with many cognate words but differing greatly in grammar and structure. Sindarin is said to be more changeful than Quenya, and there were during the First Age a number of regional dialects. The tongue used in Doriath (home of Thingol, King of the Sindar), known as Doriathrin, was said by many Grey-elves to be the highest and most noble form of the language.
In the Second Age, many Men of Númenor spoke Sindarin fluently. Their descendants, the Dúnedain of Gondor and Arnor, continued to speak Sindarin in the Third Age. Sindarin was first written using the Cirth, an Elvish runic alphabet. Later, it was usually written in the Tengwar (Quenya for 'letters') – a script invented by the elf Fëanor. Tolkien based the phonology and some of the grammar of Sindarin on Literary Welsh, and Sindarin displays some of the consonant mutations that characterize the Celtic languages.
The Dwarves rarely taught Khuzdul to others,Foster, Robert (1978) The Complete Guide to Middle-earth. Ballantine. so they learned both Quenya and Sindarin in order to communicate with the Elves, especially the Noldor and Sindar., Quenta Silmarillion, ch. 10 "Of the Sindar" By the Third Age, however, the Dwarves were estranged from the Elves and no longer routinely learned their language, preferring to use Westron.
One of these languages was created in around 1915, inspired by the Celtic languages, particularly Literary Welsh language. Tolkien called it Goldogrin or "Gnomish" in English. He wrote a substantial dictionary of Gnomish and a grammar.I-Lam na-Ngoldathon: The Grammar and Lexicon of the Gnomish Tongue. Parma Eldalamberon 11. This is the first conceptual stage of the Sindarin language. At the same time Tolkien conceived a History of the Elves and wrote it in the Book of Lost Tales. Gnomish was spoken by the Gnomes or Noldoli, the Second Clan of Elves, and Elfin was the other tongue spoken by the great majority of the Elves of the Lonely Isle.Gilson, Christopher. "Gnomish is Sindarin: The Conceptual Evolution of an Elvish Language." In Tolkien's Legendarium: Essays on the History of Middle-earth, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Carl F. Hostetter, 95-104. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.
The beginning of the "Name-list of the Fall of Gondolin", one of the Lost Tales, gives a good example of both languages (Gnomish and Elfin):
Tolkien did not provide a detailed description of the language in published works such as The Lord of the Rings, but he did say that
Tolkien wrote many pieces in Sindarin. He made an effort to give to his Elvish languages the feel and taste of . He wanted to infuse in them a kind of life, while fitting them to a very personal aesthetic taste. He wanted to build languages primarily to satisfy his personal urge and not because he had some universal design in mind.
So during the First Age, before the return of the Noldor, there were four dialects of Sindarin:
In the hidden city of Gondolin, an isolated land, a peculiar dialect developed: "This differed from the standard (of Doriath) (a) in having Western and some Northern elements, and (b) in incorporating a good many Noldorin-Quenya words in more a less Sindarized forms. Thus the city was usually called Gondolin (from Q. Ondolin(dë)) with simple replacement of g-, not Goenlin or Goenglin as"., p. 29
The phoneme is voiced to when final or before , but remains written as . The sound is written when final ( alph, "swan") or when used to spell a lenited ( i-pheriannath, "the halflings") which becomes . Old Sindarin, like Common Brittonic and Old Irish, also had a spirant m or nasal v (IPA: ), which was transcribed as mh. This merged with in later Sindarin. Phonemically, Sindarin aligns with the other velar consonants like , , , etc. but is phonetically the voiceless uvular fricative .
An acute signifies a long vowel (á, é, etc.). In a monosyllabic word, a circumflex is used (â, ê, etc.).
In Old Sindarin, there was a vowel similar to German ö (IPA: ), which Tolkien mostly transcribed as œ. Although this was meant to be distinct from the diphthong oe, it was often simply printed oe in publications like The Silmarillion, e.g. Nírnaeth Arnoediad (read: Nírnaeth Arnœdiad), Goelydh (read: Gœlydh). This vowel later came to be pronounced and is therefore transcribed as such (e.g. Gelydh).
Unlike the largely agglutinative Quenya, Sindarin is mainly a fusional language with some analytic tendencies. It can be distinguished from Quenya by the rarity of vowel endings, and the use of b d g, rare in Quenya found only after nasal consonant and Liquid consonant. Early Sindarin formed plurals by the addition of -ī, which vanished but affected the preceding vowels (as in Welsh and Germanic umlaut): S. Adan, pl. Edain, S. Orch, pl. Yrch. Sindarin forms plurals in multiple ways.
Some Sindarin (and Noldorin) nouns of one syllable form the plural with an ending (usually -in), e.g. Drû, pl. Drúin "wild men, Woses, Púkel-Men". Others form the plural through vowel change, e.g. golodh and gelydh, "lore master, sage" (obsolete as a tribal name before the Noldor came back to Beleriand); Moredhel, pl. Moredhil, "Dark-Elves". Still others form their plurals through some combination of the two, and a few do not change in the plural: Belair, "Beleriandic-Elf/Elves" is singular and plural.
The other system of number was called by Tolkien 2nd plural or collective number., p. 26 and p. 45-46. The nouns in this system form it usually by adding a suffix to the plural (as in Welsh); for example -ath, as in elenath, "all the stars (in the sky)", but not always, as in Drúath. Another ending of the 2nd pl. is -rim, used especially to indicate a race-group: Nogothrim "the race of the Dwarves", from pl. Nogoth (sg. Nogon, "Dwarf"). There exist another such ending -lir, as in Nogothlir.
The endings -rim, -hoth, and -waith, Sindarin words meaning 'multitude', 'host', and 'people' respectively, are added to a singular noun to form a 2nd plural, e.g. Gaurhoth "the Werewolf-horde" and Gaurwaith "wolvish folk", from Gaur "werewolf".
Vowels not listed do not undergo any change, such as remains as , meaning that it is possible for some words to have the same form in the singular and plural.
Mutation is triggered in various ways:
The following table outlines how different consonants are affected by the three mutations.
The apostrophe ’ indicates elision, and is not necessarily written. Those forms of lenited p that are pronounced f are written ph as mentioned above.
Noldorin words beginning in b-, d-, or g-, which descend from older mb-, nd-, or ng- are affected differently by the mutations:
Many of the mutations of Noldorin were taken into Sindarin a few years later. The Sindarin word gwath "shadow" becomes i 'wath, "the shadow"., p. 41.
The nasal mutation however does not affect 'd' and 'g' when found in the clusters 'dr', 'gr', 'gl' or 'gw'. By Salo's admission, the liquid mutation is speculative and not attested in Tolkien's writings at the time he wrote A Gateway to Sindarin.
These are subjective forms used in conjugation. Sindarin used objective detached forms, like dhe (2nd pers. formal/polite singular)., p. 26
Sindarin pronouns could combine with prepositions as in Celtic languages, Welsh: inni "to/for us" from i 'to/for' and ni 'we/us'. , p. 38 annin "for/to me"., p. 147 The first person singular pronoun suffixes could combine with nouns: Lamm, "tongue" > lammen "my tongue".
For all persons except the third person singular, the present tense is formed by the insertion of -i, and the proper enclitic pronominal ending: girin, girim, girir. As with the infinitive, -i causes an a or o in the stem to umlaut to e: pedin, pedim, pedir, from pad-. The third person singular, because it has a zero-ending, does not require the insertion of -i. This leaves the bare stem, which, because of Sindarin's phonological history, causes the vowel of the stem to become long: gîr, blâb, pâd.
The past tense of basic verbs is very complicated and poorly attested. One common reconstructed system is to use -n: darn. However, the only time this -n actually remains is after a stem in -r. After a stem ending in -l, -n becomes -ll: toll. After -b, -d, -g, -v, or -dh, it is metathesized and then assimilated to the same place of articulation as the consonant it now precedes. The consonant then experiences what could be called a "backwards mutation": -b, -d, and -g become -p, -t, and -c, and -v and -dh become -m and -d. The matter is complicated even further when pronominal endings are added. Because -mp, -mb, -nt, -nd, and -nc did not survive medially, they become -mm-, -mm-, -nn-, -nn-, and -ng. In addition, past tense stems in -m would have -mm- before any pronominal endings. These examples show the transformations step-by-step:
The future tense is formed by the addition of -tha. An -i is also inserted between the stem and -tha, which again causes a and o to umlaut to e. Endings for all persons except for the first person singular can be added without any further modification: giritham, blebithar. The first person singular ending -n causes the -a in -tha to become -o: girithon, blebithon, pedithon.
The imperative is formed with the addition of -o to the stem: giro!, pado!, blabo!.
The lexicons of Gnomish, Noldorin and Sindarin lack modern vocabulary (television, motor, etc.). Tolkien fandom have extended Sindarin to enable it to be spoken.
The form *nelchaen (extracted from nelchaenen) appears in the King's Letter, but at the time the roots for ten were KAYAN and KAYAR, resulting in Sindarin *caen, caer. This was later changed to KWAYA, KWAY-AM, resulting in Sindarin pae, so that this older form must be updated. The word *meneg is extracted from the name Menegroth, "the Thousand Caves", although this could technically be a base-12 "thousand" (i.e., 123 or 1,728).
Attempts by Tolkien fandom to write in Sindarin began in the 1970s, when the total corpus of published Elvish was only a few hundred words. Since then, usage of Elvish has flourished in poems and texts, phrases and names, and tattoos. But Tolkien himself never intended to make his languages complete enough for conversation; as a result, newly invented Elvish texts, such as dialogue written by the linguist David Salo to be sung to the musical score for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, require conjecture and sometimes coinage of new words.
Internal timeline
In Tolkien's words:
Dialects
The divergence of Sindarin (Old Sindarin) begun first into a Northern or Mithrimin group and a Southern group. The Southern group had a much larger territory, and included Doriathrin or "Central Sindarin".
Doriathrin
Doriathrin preserved many archaic features. Unlike the other dialects, it remained free from Quenya influences. The "accent" of Doriath was also quite recognisable, so that after Túrin had left Doriath he kept a Doriathrin accent until his death, which immediately pinpointed his origin to speakers of other dialects of Sindarin. "The post-war 'Beleriandic' as lingua franca and as a language of Noldor was strongly influenced by Doriath.", p. 132 Tolkien set out much about Doriathrin morphology, and how it contrasts with the other Sindarin dialects, in his linguistic writings:
Falathrin
The language of the followers of the Elf Círdan, called Falathrin ( Falassian in English), is the other dialect of the Southern Sindarin group. It remained close to the tongue of Doriath because there was great trade between the two groups up to the time of the Wars of Beleriand.
North Sindarin
North Sindarin was spoken by the Mithrim, the northernmost group of the Grey-elves. It differed from the Central Sindarin of Beleriand in many aspects. Originally spoken in Dorthonion and Hithlum, it contained many unique words and was not fully intelligible to the other Elves. The Northern dialect was in many ways more conservative, and later divided itself into a North-Western dialect (Hithlum, Mithrim, Dor-lómin) and a North-Eastern dialect (the highlands of Dorthonion, and the wide plains of Ard-galen to the north of the highlands). This language was at first adopted by the exiled Noldor after their return to Middle-earth at Losgar. Later Noldorin Sindarin changed, much owing to the adoption of Quenya features, and partially because of the love of the Noldor for making linguistic changes. Beren's heritage was clear to Thingol of Doriath as he spoke the North Sindarin of his homeland.
Noldorin Sindarin
With the exception of Doriathrin, Sindarin adopted some Quenya features after the return of the Noldor, as well as unique sound changes devised by the Noldor (who loved changing languages):
In the Second and Third Age
'Beleriandic' Sindarin as a lingua franca of all Elves and many Men, and as the language of the Noldor in exile, was based on Western Sindarin but was strongly influenced by Doriathrin. During the Second Age Sindarin was a lingua franca for all Elves and their friends (thus it was used to inscribe the West-gate of Moria), until it was displaced for Men by Westron, which arose in the Third Age as a language heavily influenced by Sindarin. In Gondor at the end of the Third Age, Sindarin was still spoken daily by a few noble Men in the city Minas Tirith. Aragorn, raised in the safety of the Elvish stronghold of Rivendell,, Appendix A "The Númenórean Kings" spoke it fluently., book 1, ch. 12 "Flight to the Ford"
Phonology
Sindarin was designed with a Welsh-like phonology., p. 135.
Stress is as in Latin: on the penult if that is heavy (a closed syllable, long vowel or diphthong) and on the antepenult if the penult is light.
Consonants
Orthographic conventions
i Represents when initial before vowels, (short vowel) and (long vowel) everywhere else. ng Represents when final, everywhere else. ph Represents word-finally (owing to being used for ) and represents mutation of word-initial to . f Represents everywhere except finally where it is always .
Vowels
Monophthongs
Diphthongs
Diphthongs are ai (pronounced like aisle aɪ), ei (d ay ɛɪ), ui (r uin ʊɪ), and au (c ow aʊ). If the last diphthong finishes a word, it is spelt aw. There are also diphthongs ae and oe with no English counterparts, similar to pronouncing a or o respectively in the same syllable as one pronounces an e (as in p et); IPA . Tolkien had described dialects (such as Doriathrin) and variations in pronunciations (such as that of Gondor), and other pronunciations of ae and oe undoubtedly existed.
Grammar
Tolkien wrote that he gave Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh ... because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers".
Nouns
While Sindarin does not have a grammatical gender, it has two systems of grammatical number, similar to Welsh. Plural nouns correspond to the singular/plural number system just as of English. Sindarin noun plurals are unpredictable and formed in several ways.
Plural forms
Most Sindarin are formed by apophony and are characterised by i-mutation. The Noldorin term for this is prestanneth "affection of vowels". In an earlier stage of the language, plurals were marked by the suffix -ī, to which the root assimilated, becoming Front vowel (and raised if Open vowel); later the final -ī was lost, leaving the changed root as the sole marker of the plural. (This process is very similar to the Germanic umlaut that produced the English forms man/men, goose/geese, and closer still to the Welsh i-affection plurals in forms like gair/geiriau and car/ceir.) The resulting plural patterns are:
Initial consonant mutations
Sindarin has a series of consonant mutations, varying between dialects as follows.
Mutations found in Noldorin
The mutations of "early conceptual Noldorin" are defined in Tolkien's Lam na Ngoluith, Early Noldorin Grammar.Tolkien, J. R. R., Lam na Ngoluith. Early Noldorin Grammar. Parma Eldalamberon 13, p. 120.
Mutations found in Salo's grammar
David Salo's A Gateway to Sindarin proposes a more complex set of mutations, based on extrapolation from the Sindarin corpus, as follows (empty cells indicate no change):
Pronouns
One source is used for the Sindarin pronouns,, p. 132. another for the possessive suffixes., p. 46
+ Pronoun + Possessive suffix
Verbs
Tolkien wrote that Quenya inflections were pretty regular,Tolkien, J. R. R., "Early Qenya Grammar", Parma Eldalamberon 14, p. 56. but that "Sindarin verbal history is complicated.", p. 43. About -ant, the 3rd person past tense ending of Sindarin, he wrote: "it is rather like that of Medieval Welsh -as, or modern Welsh 3p -odd." So with teith- "make marks of signs, write, inscribe", teithant is the 3rd person singular past tense. Cf. Welsh chwaraeodd ef, "he played" (< chwarae 'to play' + -odd and ef 'he'). -ant is the Welsh 3p plural ending: chwaraeant hwy 'they (will) play'.
Basic verbs
Basic verbs form the infinitive by adding -i: giri from gir-. This ending causes an a or o in the stem to umlaut to e: blebi from blab-. The infinitive is not used as a noun; the gerund is used instead.
Vocabulary
As of 2008, about 25,000 Elvish words have been published.According to the French linguist Edouard Kloczko in L'Encyclopédie des Elfes, Le Pré aux Clercs (2008), , p. 145.
ambar, cemen menel nén nár nér nís mat- suc- alta, halla nóre lóme aure, ré
Numerals
According to Tolkien, the elves preferred duodecimal counting (base 12) to the Dúnedain's decimal system (base 10: Quenya maquanotië, * quaistanótië), though the two systems seem to have coexisted. The numbers 1–12 are presented below (reconstructed forms are marked with an asterisk *), as well as a few higher numbers.
er, min one mein, main, minui first tad two taid, tadui second neledh three neil, nail, nelui third canad four canthui fourth leben five levnui fifth eneg six enchui, enecthui sixth odo, odog seven othui, odothui seventh tolodh eight tollui eighth neder nine nedrui ninth pae or caer ten paenui or caenen tenth minib eleven ýneg twelve *nelphae thirty host one hundred and forty-four (gross) *meneg thousand
Scholarship and fandom
Two magazines— Vinyar Tengwar, from issue 39 (July 1998), and Parma Eldalamberon, from issue 11 (1995)—are exclusively devoted to the editing and publishing of Tolkien's gigantic mass of unpublished linguistic papers. These are published at a slow pace and the editors have not published a comprehensive catalogue of these unpublished linguistic papers. Access to the original documents is severely limited as Christopher Tolkien omitted them from his 12-volume The History of Middle-earth. Many new-found words of Sindarin, Noldorin and Ilkorin have been published and the grammar rules of these languages disclosed.
Primary
Secondary
Sources
(2025). 9780997432114, NEMVUS. ISBN 9780997432114
External links
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